Blue Ocean Strategy

Blue ocean strategy is a book of business strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renà ©e Mauborgne. The blue ocean strategy explains how to move your business into new markets with less competition and greater profitability. The book is basically divided into three main parts. The first part covers some important concepts of blue ocean strategy such as value innovation, differentiation and low cost and key analytical tools and frameworks used in this strategy. The second part explains the four steps of blue ocean strategy formulation. The main idea behind this book is to present an organized framework for identifying and implementing out of the box and never been thought before blue ocean strategies. If one is capable of thinking out of the box, something other than a traditional strategy then it will enable us in formulating a blue ocean. The basic idea of blue ocean strategy is to reconstruct market boundaries to break from the competition and create blue oceans. The main idea behind consisted of two parts: first was to discover whether systematic patterns existed in reconstructing market boundaries and secondly whether r not these applied to all kinds of businesses and industry sectors. The researchers found six basic approaches also called six paths framework for reconstructing market boundaries. These six approaches challenge the traditional six assumptions involved in formulating strategies which lead to creating red oceans. They proceed by emphasizing on the fact that the companies should break out of these boundaries which they define by themselves on how to compete. Path One: Look across alternative industries The first path for a company is not only to compete with firms in its own industry but it should also consider the firms in alternative industries offering such products and services which have different functions and forms but serve the same purpose. One such example is that of Net Jets which came up with the idea of fractional jet ownership. Net Jets created a multi billion dollar Blue Ocean of private jets and commercial travel which offered low variable and fixed costs as compared to commercial airline travelling and thus it created a entirely new market and was the only  survivor and market leader of all the 57 new entrants. Similar example is that of NTT DoCoMo which broke out of Red Ocean of intense competition by breaking the tradeoff between the alternatives. Path Two: Look across different strategic groups within industries The second path given by Blue Ocean is to get out of the competition by looking across different strategic groups. In this context the different companies in an industry working on a similar strategy fall under one strategic group and others in different strategic groups. And in this highly intense and competitive market the key to creating a Blue Ocean across different strategic groups is to break out of these by creating a better understanding of the factors that determine customers’ decision to trade up or down from one group to another. A very good example given here is that of Curves which is a women fitness company, broke out of the completion by building on the advantages of both the traditional health clubs and the home exercise programs. Other examples are that of Ralph Lauren, Toyota Lexus, Sony Walkman and Champion Enterprises which created Blue Oceans by breaking out of their strategic groups by offering the advantages of both the strategic groups of their industries that resulted in their success. Path Three: Look across Chain of Buyers In most of the industries it has been a trend to target only a single type of buyer. However there is a chain of buyers which includes the purchasers, the actual users and some times also the influencers. Each of these three groups of buyers may seem similar to the seller but actually they are different as they provide different value. Conventionally different industries focus only on a single customer segment and think that they are the only possible target customers, however it is a wrong approach and they need to think out of the box which can lead to creating new Blue Oceans. Novo Nordisk a Danish insulin producing company created a Blue Ocean in the insulin industry. Previously Nordisk like all other pharmaceuticals focused only on doctors which are the influencers. But Novo Nordisk came up with the idea of Novo Pen which was easy to use and was targeted directly at the end users that is the diabetes patients. This helped them in creating a blue ocean and continuous improvement and advancement in their offering resulted in  maintaining their Blue Ocean success. Path Four: Look across complementary product and service offerings This path explains that the importance of complementary products and services should never be overlooked as the untapped value is often hidden in them. Providing the facilities of baby sitting and car parking are complementary to movie theatres. NABI made use of the fiberglass instead of steel body buses and had a huge impact on lowering the maintenance and other costs and created a Blue Ocean in the bus industry. Philips created the kettle with a mouth filter and Barns and Noble came up with knowledgeable staff in their lounging were such complementary products and service which were revolutionary. Path Five: Look across functional or emotional appeal to buyers There are different types of appealing strategies that are adopted by companies to appeal the customers. Some of these are functional while others are emotional. The different examples discussed in this case are the Cemex (Mexican Cement Company) and QB house (Japanese Barber shop) which created Blue Oceans by appealing their customers through different functional and emotional offerings. Path Six: Look across time This path illustrates that how important it is to have foresight and keep in mind the changes that are to take place with passage of time. This can be done by looking across the time in terms of the value a market delivers today to the value it may deliver tomorrow. Apple capitalized on the changing trend in the music industry and came up with ITunes music store for its IPod which also helped it in stopping illegal selling of music and creating a Blue Ocean. Cisco Systems also looked ahead of time and accounted for the growing demand of high speed data exchange with its routers, switches and other networking devices. 2. Focus on the Big Picture, Not the Numbers Traditionally what most of the strategies lack is that they don’t think out of the box and thus lack the view of the big picture and thus they key is to create a strategy canvas to arrive at a Blue Ocean. Drawing Your Strategy Canvas Drawing a strategy canvas has never been an easy to do job. It involves  identifying the key factors of competition which can be done by assessing that to what extent your company and its competitors offer the most competing factors and what are the actions that are being taken by you and your competitors. This process after the implementation of six step model involves steps in visualizing strategy which are as follows: Step One: Visual Awakening The process of visual awakening is very important to change the mind set of such people especially the executives who are resistant to change and like the status quo. However this problem can be overcome by asking such people to draw the value curve of their company’s strategy which will trigger the need for change in their minds and thus they will be inclined towards change and will come up with new and different strategies. Step Two: Visual Exploration The wakeup call was just the first step. The next step is to send team it to field, putting managers face to face with customers and experiencing by themselves what problems they have with their products and services and what are their perceptions. This task should not be outsourced as it is very important to see these things by your self rather than letting others do the work of your eyes. They should observe their customers (existing, lost and new ones) as well the customers of their competitors and then come back and analyze their strategies. Step Three: Visual Strategy fair In the third step of visualizing strategy the teams are asked to draw six new curves of strategy and create a compelling tagline which can emphasize the strategy in a better way. After that the teams are asked to present them and on the basis of feedback and discussion the new curves for strategy are formulated. Step Four: Visual Communication The last step is to communicate the newly formulated future strategy to employees in an easy and understandable manner. This can be done by distributing one pager showing old and the new strategies to the employees and then can be discussed with every one. 3. Reach beyond Existing Demand The third principle for creating Blue Ocean is to reach beyond the existing demand. This to increase the demand for a new offering and two strategies are followed by companies to achieve this goal. One is to focus on existing markets and customers and the other is to target finer markets or customer segments to accommodate buyer differences. Another important concept explained here is to maximize the size of Blue Ocean, which says that once the Blue Ocean has been created the next step is to maximize its size. For this purpose companies instead of focusing on their customers try to focus on the non-customers by taking the reverse approach which allows the companies to unlock mass of customers and demand which did not exist before. Callaway Golf is one such company which created demand for its offering by focusing on its non-customers. The Three Tiers of Non-Customers According to Blue Ocean strategy there are three different tiers of non-customers that can be converted in to customers which are as follows: i. The first tier of non-customers is closest to market sitting on its edge waiting to jump ship and shift to another industry as soon as the opportunity knocks. ii. The second tier is of customers who refuse to use you offerings. These are buyers who have used your industry offerings just as an option to fulfill their needs but have often voted against them. iii. The third tier is of non-customers who are farthest from your market and have never thought or considered of using you industry offerings as an option and can only be attracted by focusing on commonalities. 4. Get the Strategic Sequence Right The fourth principle of formulating the Blue Ocean strategy is to get the strategic sequence right. This principle focuses on building robust business models to ensure healthy profits based on Blue Ocean strategy.